Leonardo Da Vinci Codex Leicester Board Game Review - Deez Nutz?

0:00 hello welcome back to the channel and this is a channel where we give you reviews playthroughs unboxings generally like to talk a lot of bollocks tabletop gaming in general and in this video we're going to be talking about a reprint of a game that was released in 2006 we're going to be talking about Leonardo da Vinci's codex Leicester and in this game you'll be placing your workers are on board to gather a variety of stuff that will allow you to complete inventions that will give you points that will related when the game so in this video we're going to be giving you a very brief overview of the rules to tell you what we do like what we don't like and we'll come back and we'll say whether or not Leonardo da Vinci's codex Lister is worth your time and bother today and in the future so remember if you're new here consider subscribing to this channel where hit the like button and all that YouTube [ __ ] see you after this Pollux so I wanna hang on just hold your horses admit I know you looking at this game you're thinking it looks like complete and a [ __ ] dog [ __ ] right but just bear with me a sec right because things sometimes aren't as they seem right so Leonardo da Vinci's codex Lister is a bog standard Euro worker placement game I come back here you [ __ ] each player is going to have a certain amount of workers at the beginning of the game you've got a big worker which represents the master builder and you've got a few apprentices yeah you're gonna get a couple of boards you're going to get the Hammer Ball and you're going to get the pincer board right and you'll populate these boards with cubes that act as like rewards later on in a game yeah just three phases in this game is going to be the declaring invention game at the bottom of the board you're going to have a series of inventions you're gonna have

1:31 about four inventions that are available for you to declare and you're gonna have some future inventions and then you can have some [ __ ] epic inventions at the bottom right if you want to declare an invention you'll have to provide the resources that the invention requires as you declare right take one of your markers off of either the hammer board or the pencil board can't do the principle at the beginning because you need to get a laboratory on there right so you take your hammer and then you'll stick it on the invention and place all the resources in the Box on your player board this means you can now build this invention and the way you do this is that you have to get work days and you'll be moving you'll Hammer up a track and when you hit the black hammer that means that you have completed the invention the thing about this is everybody can declare on the same invention so it's the player who builds the invention first that gets the main reward and then if you do it second you still get psyched but it's going to be like the sort of sloppy seconds you know what I mean also in this phase you've got this thing it's called an automata but in the original it's called a mechanical man I kept on referring to it as a tomato so we just call it mechanical man oh is that sexist so we just call it a mechanical they if you've got a mechanical man then you can move that across to one of the Laboratories with a furnace and this basically acts as two apprentices right one of the main rules in this game is there's like a mini sort of auction thing so you can't place a master and an apprentice together but you can add an apprentice to a Master space and you can add the master space to The Apprentice space but you can't add apprentices to existing apprentices once you've stuck them out there so you've got to be very mindful of this right so once you've done placing out all of your workers then

3:03 you'll move into the resolving area phase you'll be looking to see who has the majority of influence in each region right Masters count as two apprentices count as one whoever's got the majority will take the action first and the first play attack the action will do it for free the second player will pay one money the third player will pay three money and then the third player will play guess what for money right so some of the places that you can go to you can go to the council you've got a worker here then you can decide where you're going to be in the turn order and you'll also be able to take a council reward not that my local Council gives me any [ __ ] rewards yeah they just want to take my [ __ ] money but you might want to immediately sell one material of your choice for free Florence or you might just want to get some Florence or you might want to reduce the cost of buying materials in sections D to H right so these can be quite useful there's lots of them there's usually a bit of a tussle for the council spaces you can go to the laboratory in which case you'll be able to get an extra add-on for your Workshop board gives you more spaces to place your apprentices and get more work weeks you can get a mechanical manner or you could pay one flooring to get an extra work week then you've got the markets where you'll get all the resources like wood Stone all that [ __ ] and then you'll go to the bank where you'll just be able to get money right there's also the academy where you'll be able to get extra apprentices be able to buy material of your choice for one flooring right if you ever complete an invention you'll take the card and put it in front of you but you leave any other players hammers or pincers on it right because they might be able to get some reward later there's also patreon rewards yeah if you complete a certain

4:34 Milestone or an achievement in a game you'll get a bonus so for instance if you are the player with the most influence in the council twice you'll be able to take a patron reward or maybe you might hire all your apprentices at the Academy right some of the patreon rewards that you can get are quite powerful yeah you can get a reward that allows you not to pay the salary of two additional hard workers because in certain rounds you'll have to pay one flooring for each worker that you've got or you might want to just get a couple of extra materials like this can be really useful during the the middle of the game where the materials get a little bit clogged up and every time you do this you'll move the cube down the knowledge track and this will give you even more bonuses right so keep doing this for I guess eight rounds yeah in the eighth round you can't buy materials you can only sell them right so it could be a bit of a Mad rabid frenzy trying to get rid of all your materials and it'll do a bit of final score you get points for different sets of inventions and then a player with the most money will be the winner of Leonardo da Vinci codex Leicester so do we like Leonardo da Vinci codex Leicester so the first thing that we really like about this game is that the mini auction system works really really well you might think Billy big balls and you'll stroll into the council and you think well I'm going first year but you put an apprentice down there somebody else comes in and then they put down their Master you know that you can't add apprentices to existed apprentices so you are forced to either concede the majority or place you'll master in that spot right we're gonna need your master to use for work weeks to build the inventions right so there's this nice tussle between how you use the intrinsic value of each worker that you have right and that's tasty so the next thing that

6:06 we really like about this game is that declaring the inventions adds a lot of attention to the game right the original game I'm pretty sure there was some hidden information there whether it was the resources that you had you put them under the mat all that the declaring was done in secret they knew that you declared on something but you didn't know which right that's been removed in this game it's all open information and that adds an extra layer of attention right if you declare first you're going to be opening up the flood guides to other people thinking well if they're going to be declaring on that one really don't want them getting 10 victory points on that one so I might have to declare on that one thus before I do what I really want to do to stop them from doing it right or you might just want to hang back for a little bit build up your resources build up your engine and just as somebody is say a round or two away from completing that invention then you go in there and steal the cocaine right from under their nose right love it so the final thing that we really like about this is that this game gives you loads and loads of rewards it's like you're getting rewards all the time you've got the rewards on the invention cards you've got the patreon rewards that are going to give you special bonuses are going to be really really helpful and each time you complete a patreon reward you can move down the knowledge track and you're going to get a reward then as well so you can stack these [ __ ] up like a brick [ __ ] right I love games that drip feeds you rewards all the way through there's always something to look forward to there's always something coming your way and it just seems like in this game every single round you're going to be getting something extra and that's fantastic right don't we like but Leonardo da Vinci so first thing that we don't like about this game is that while we were lording the fact this game gives you loads of rewards towards the end of the game these rewards seem to sort of just disappear right where you're constantly

7:37 getting them you're sort of going to run out of meaningful rewards to take you're going to be taking the best rewards at the beginning of the game and you're going to be left with the [ __ ] at the bottom of the barrel right towards the end and that could be a little bit disheartening when you're looking around thinking well getting an extra Apprentice isn't going to help me because it's going to cost me more money and I don't really need one anyway you're going to be doing that at a beginning right so some of these rewards are really helpful at the beginning of the game you're going to be taking them most of the time and you're just going to be left with some substandard rewards towards the end it just gives this game a sort of a bit of an empty feeling towards the end so the next thing we don't like about this game is the theme right there's basically no theme it's drier than an Hawaiian Solarium yeah I mean I could put any bloody theme on this game it could have been anything right but they chose Leonardo da Vinci another medieval blah blah blah theme that absolutely means nothing and the theme just doesn't Inspire any if it does it again it uses the same palette as hanza teutonica as much as I love hanza teutonica just looks like a pile of crap done it and the same Applause is okay the artwork and the production value is off the charts like dice tree games the publisher has worked an absolute Miracle with this yeah you've got wonderful sort of Poker style money chips here they've completely revamped everything and it looks absolutely stunning it's just that you've got that horrible dirty duck [ __ ] brown color I don't know it just makes me feel like all itchy in that you know what I mean so the final thing that we don't like about Leonardo da Vinci codex zester is the cover up any game where a bloke has got his [ __ ] out is a real turn off for me and I played this with one of my kids and I immediately said dad why has that

9:10 bloke got his Willy out yeah and I had to come up with some excuse like he left his wife once around his mistress's house or something like that so yeah people are going to look at this game see that Geezer with his knob out and they're going to be thinking well mine's ten times bigger than that what they're thinking now if you look closely his actual penis is smaller than his nut sack which offer want to be a little bit weird you look back here your trouser snake might be even smaller than this blokes but I can't really talk smart [ __ ] enormous but yeah naked blokes on box covers no not for me mate I too summarize is Leonardo Da Vinci codex Leicester worth your time and bother today and in the future so we're gonna say yes this is a really pleasant surprise for us right we weren't expecting this game to be anywhere near as good as what it turned out to be it looked like it was going to be completely not a dog [ __ ] right but it turned out to have ample amounts of tension and meaningful decisions yeah it's a shame that the rewards seem to disappear towards the end of the game yeah and the lack of famine means that nobody is ever going to play this game in fact I don't think anybody's even going to watch this video which is a real shame if you like dry Euro slash worker placement games then Leonardo da Vinci is a really really solid choice for you there you go that is Leonardo Da Vinci codex Leicester remember you know where consider subscribing this channel hit like button on YouTube [ __ ] see you next time